


Primary

by dellastarr



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27187243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dellastarr/pseuds/dellastarr
Summary: Jennifer and the voices in her head.  Deacon in her bed.
Relationships: Deacon/Jennifer Goines, James Cole/Jennifer Goines
Comments: 7
Kudos: 7





	Primary

Primary

You’d think it was the voices that would drive you over the edge of the precipice. The voices that taunt and accuse, the voices that speak of things no one wants to speak, the voices that aren’t whispers in your nightmares, or ghosts that haunt your daydreams. It’s the way your skin crawls when you recall that voice when everything seems calm and quiet. It comes knocking, gently tapping on your door and won’t stop. You can open the door and no one is there. And then you hear it again, over and over and over. The same dance steps, the same circular attempt. That’s when your own voice grows insistent, impatient to make the voices be still. 

“Being Primary is a gift.” That was something that this or that nameless acolyte learns. When in service to the Witness, your’s is a gift. Your’s…. your what? Your insanity. Your fragile pieces of eight, cut so haphazardly into bits of nothing. Nothing whole anymore, just a bit left, a useless, irregular piece which lose its value with each new cut.

“You’re okay!" Deacon came in and shut the door behind him. "Ease down, ease down Ripley.” 

Deacon beside her. She only felt safe when he slept here at night. His calm assurance that nothing would happen to her when he was around. How many times had she heard that mindless reassurance? “It’ll be okay.” It seldom was. Empty words spit out into the cold steel nights of Raritan. 

“We need you.” That was more the expectation from Cassie, Jones, or Cole. Not we need you, Jennifer. Just her primary nightmares. Her visions, her drawings, her lost moments from the time stream. The slow drip of her sanity spilled out on the floor with each nightmarish prediction, each piece of the puzzle. They all had their demands of her tenuous grasp on reality. How often did they say anything that soothed her demons?

Even Deacon would bark at her, “Your directions are worth shit,” she said aloud, remembering Deacon’s rebuke. “I can only draw what I see." continuing the conversation as if he were accusing right this moment.

Deacon led her to the bed and away from the pages of charcoal drawings, her fingers stained black yet again. He took a wet cloth from the basin and washed her hands. “I told you to forget that! I’m sorry. How many times would you like to hear me prostrate myself?” He could see her bow her head. It shamed him to have said it and not just let it go. "I’m sorry I said that.” Deacon pulled her into an embrace. 

“I know. I know. I was just….”

“Let it go. Just be here right now. Be here, with me. In this place. I’ve got you. You won’t fall.” He pulled her tighter, leaning in to kiss her.

She closed her eyes and silently nodded against his chest. 

“Trust me,” he reassured her, as many times as she needed to hear it.

“I’m trying to believe it. I’m trying.” She willed herself to control her breathing and just be in this place, this moment, with this man, Deacon’s face, Deacon’s hands. But no matter how hard she tried, it was Cole’s eyes she saw every time. Cole’s look, that undeniable look whenever he was with Cassie. That was the look she wanted and that was the look she would never receive. 

When she was a little girl, she’d close her eyes to sleep, only to be tormented by faces, strange eyes that she couldn’t hide from. Haunting eyes, taunting, eyes that followed you, eyes from which you couldn’t escape, eyes which lie in wait for some unguarded moment. Was that what she was doing now? Protecting herself from an unguarded moment with Deacon? As a child, she would hide her dolls in the closet and barricade the door, removing the eyes as far from her as possible. Rarely a calm night’s restful sleep. More often, were bleak nights times when she’d wake in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, seeing the hungry ravenous eyes staring back. Something about those eyes--alone in their own chaotic darkness, terrified her. Were they her own eyes staring back?

Jennifer closed her eyes once again, breathing in the smell of Deacon. Wanting to have only this moment, this now. But the past would relentlessly rear its head. Back to a painful childhood and the rhyme her mother would repeat nightly as she dressed for bed... “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Words meant to still or words meant to frighten? How many a mother spoke those comforting words to their child, leaving them in the dark? But to Jennifer such proclamations fueled her fitful dreams.

Would her mother care if God carried her daughter away in the dark cover of night? 

Too often it was the other eyes that visited her at night, lurking in the shadows--dark eyes that felt like a black veil was shrouding what little light was allowed to creep into the room. Jennifer wanted to crawl inside the Light and wait for the Dawn to return and lead her out of the dark corners of her mind.

Oh to be consumed with benevolent eyes which could watch over her, to wake her in the pale mornings, awakening to a new day, or in the calming glow of friends surrounding her, speaking gentle words to silence the demons.

Opening her eyes again, it was Deacon’s eyes she saw staring back. Deacon's look was different. Something unspoken between them, unnamed. A longing that neither would speak. Broken childhoods where your own futile hope lie in the love you found in yourself, not in another.

But there were times, all too few, when tender eyes would be there-- the kind “otter” eyes with their soulful protective gaze, there to remind her that she wasn’t alone. Otter eyes that could see into the darkest places and call forth the light to banish the dark. Otter eyes that trusted her, listened to her, asked her. Otter eyes that knew that she mattered in this dark world. Otter eyes that were not only James Cole’s eyes.

Deacon was humming softly, a tune she couldn’t place, though it sounded familiar. He was there with her and she knew a day would come when he would leave. If only Deacon’s eyes were the only ones she would see. To turn and know that a loved one was watching over you, facing the Dark together.

Voices in her mind’s eye, beginning to sing. Singing in the dark. Jennifer started to hum and in her mind, she knew the primaries were singing with her. “Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels…. white ponies with blue eyes, festooned with ribbons braided into their hair. She hugged her unicorn with its cotton candy pink hair and gold trimmed cloth horn. A children’s toy to offer solace in the unsettled bombardment of noise and despair.

“See the stone set in your eyes,” that was what Deacon was humming. From Sound of Music to U2 in a wink. Eyes again. Cole’s eyes, earnest and forgiving. Cole’s eyes. Deacon’s eyes. The song continued on in her mind until that refrain, aching and sad yes, but also illuminating, “with or without you.” That dull longing making her want to softly cry into Deacon’s shoulder. No explanations, no expectations. Just two lost travelers holding each other in the night, pretending they are with their “other.”

“It hurts my heart,” Jennifer murmured. 

“Doesn’t have to hurt tonight. No torments, no confessions. Just be here.” Deacon breathed into her hair.

“What If I break open that egg, all the yoke would spill yellows onto the floor and that would be the end. I’d be nothing but....” Jennifer mumbled. 

Deacon didn’t let her finish, “What is it I heard you say to Cole once--give me yellow and I can paint you the world. Tonight, you have only yellows.”


End file.
